https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348977053i/5255820.jpg Of course, I only speak to women—to my own dear sisters; I don’t speak to men, for I don’t expect them to like what I say. They pretend to admire us very much, but I should like them to admire us a little less and to trust us a little more…When I see the …
Category: American Literature
Gertrude Elliot’s Crucible, Mrs. George Sheldon Downs (1908)
Prison bars are not the only barriers to man’s freedom, there is a bondage that is far more intolerable—the bondage of one’s own evil passions and self-will. The Dime Novel Gertrude Elliot’s Crucible is considered an American ‘dime novel’ for working and middle class women. Dime novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries …
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Peace Breaks Out, John Knowles (1981)
But no men got killed by the enemy, not one, on United States soil…They never got here. Do you realize what that saved the American psyche from? Think how we would have felt if we’d seen Germans parading down Fifth Avenue in New York, locking up President Roosevelt, pasting up orders on buildings telling what …
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1905)
You asked me just now for the truth—well, the truth about any girl is that once she’s talked about she’s done for; and the more she explains her case the worse it looks. Though Lily Bart didn’t grow up rich, she was born into a comfortable and respectable home with relatives high on the social …
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton (1911)
This was a very depressing novel. Let’s just get that out of the way. Like another of Wharton’s New England novels, Summer, which I read last year, she once again creates a character whose life has promise and potential, but bad choices made early on coupled with poverty and duty to family ruin any chance …
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (1943)
Johnny: Anybody can ride in one of those hansom cabs, provided they got the money. So you can see what a free country we got here…In the old countries, certain people aren’t free to ride in them, even if they have the money. Francie: Wouldn’t it be more of a free country if we could …
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Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time, Fanny Fern (1855)
All the world knew it was quite unnecessary for a pretty woman to be smart. Fanny Fern (1811-1872 ) was one of the most well-known women writers in America. As a journalist she had the distinction of being the first woman to write a signed weekly column at a major publication and one of the …
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The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, HP Lovecraft (1941)
…he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out …
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Summer, Edith Wharton (1917)
“She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it.” Charity Royall was born into extreme poverty on …
Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
There was no accepted standard of what was ‘manly and what was ‘womanly.’…When Jeff said to Celis, “Women should not carry anything…they are not built for heavy work. Celis looked out across the fields to where some women were working, building a new bit of wall out of large stones; looked back at the nearest …
Classic Laurie 
